The U.S. Asks WikiLeaks Not To Publish Documents

The news media “should be cautioned not to facilitate the leaking of classified documents,” urged the spokesman for the U.S. Department of Defense before the release of documents on the Iraq war.

The U.S. Defense Department appealed to the news media not to publish the classified documents on the war in Iraq that the website WikiLeaks is about to release.

Col. Dave Lapan, the U.S. Defense Department spokesman, told Reuters, “News organizations should be cautioned not to facilitate the leaking of classified documents with this disreputable organization.” He also urged WikiLeaks “to return the stolen documents to the United States government and … not publish them.”

WikiLeaks is about to release up to a half million classified logs, reports and notes in a few days. In order to cope with the situation, the Pentagon set up a 120-member team. “The same team we put together after the publication of the [Afghan war documents],” Lapan added.

Last July, the website created by Julian Assange had disclosed more than 70,000 documents on the Afghan war and led to a debate about the risks into which this disclosure had placed the American soldiers, their allies and Afghan informers.

Lapan’s statement was made while Australian Julian Assange’s bid for work and residence permits was denied by the Swedish authorities on Monday. He had decided to go to live in Sweden to take advantage of the strict law on protection of journalists’ sources.

Will there be any information disclosed about the victims of the Iraq war?

Although the conflict in Iraq is no longer at the forefront of public debate in the United States, the release of these documents could re-open the controversies over the most sensitive aspects of the conflict, especially over the scandal of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. A source close to the case also mentioned some documents that could include information about the civilian victims.

According to Lapan, the Pentagon would know what documents WikiLeaks is about to release, and this could allow it to evaluate the potential consequences of their release more quickly. As for the Afghan case, the Pentagon and the U.S. Army, which opened an investigation in order to identify WikiLeaks’ source, are focusing their attention on Bradley Manning, who had also worked as a military analyst of the war in Iraq.

Bradley Manning, currently imprisoned, has already been accused of leaking a classified video that shows a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists.